V – 00002.8 – You Never Change.

I felt the adrenaline that filled me starting to fade away as I leaned down and bit into the stag’s throat, my teeth broke through the crystal blood with ease and ripped into the animal's arteries and I began drinking.

My body started stitching itself together yet I noticed It felt different than it always had in the past.

Now that I was really thinking about my body, my wounds too felt colder more numb than they should, the pain that I would have expected to feel with several large holes burned into me was dull, distant, and terribly cold.

The blood tasted the same as always when it slipped down my throat. But, instead of feeling hot needles pulling my body together as new cells stretched across the gaps in my flesh, the sensation was colder, not quite cold but certainly no longer hot.

I continued my feast eating the creature’s entire head. By the time I was finished the holes in my body had sealed over, but they remained tender the flesh pinkish and the surrounding area of the regenerated wounds still showed signs of being burned.

Reaching down, I grabbed one of the stag’s legs and heaved. My calves and thighs flexed, expanding against my skin as I strained hard, and I felt the frozen dirt underneath my feet start to break under the balls of my feet as I pulled.

The stag barely moved as I pulled on it, its monstrous weight kept it practically rooted to the ground and for the few feet I had managed to move I left a trail of footsteps dented into the earth.

I dropped its leg breathed out hard, and leaned on my knees for a moment to regain my breath. “Fuck me how the hell am I going to get this thing back to camp,” I mumbled out which now that Reggie had pointed it out, I was realizing I did a lot.

“We could try to shed as much of its weight as possible, field dress it a bit, get the last of the blood out, its gut sack and organs?” I thought the suggestion over for a moment before agreeing and kneeling down over the corpse and pulling one of the knives I’d looted from the soldiers off my belt I began gutting the monster pulling out its organs some of which were actually as big as or bigger than my head.

Once I finished gutting the creature completely and draining it I grabbed its front legs again and internally cursed myself for not looking for something smaller or at least bringing my ropes with me.

Dragging the stag was much easier now however, the task was still extremely taxing, my legs burned with the effort and I could feel actual pain in the still-healing sections of my body, and my hands cramped horribly with the strain of holding onto the creature.

I ended up having to take breaks every fifty or so feet and getting the stag back to my camp took me hours, by the time I got back Reggie was awake and looked pretty nervous and the sun was already high in the sky.

“Hey there kid, sorry it took me so long, dragging this thing was a real bitch” I said as I got close enough to the camp that I wouldn’t have to shout to be heard.

Reggie looked at me as if I was dragging a T-rex into the camp as I crossed the last of the distance and dropped it before dropping to my knee’s myself.

“What the hell is that?” he almost shouted at me, his eyes shifting rapidly between me, and the herculean stag.

It took me a good few minutes to finally muster the energy to respond to him as I felt the burning fatigue in every fiber of my body finally starting to recede, and I pulled up my status to check what the creature was.

“Apparently it's something called a Lux stag from the Solivus genus,” I said as if it was just an everyday run-of-the-mill statement.

“I never knew stuff like that lived in Alaska” he replied quickly still looking bewildered.

“They don’t, or at least they didn’t all kinds of weird shit started showing up after the quakes,” I told Reggie and he replied immediately.

“Then how do you know what it’s called, and even its genus.”

“The system gives you a notification when you kill something, the notification tells you the name of it,” I said in a very matter-of-fact tone.

“So… you killed that uh Lux stag. How?” the tone came off as almost incredulous and all the previous anxiety and deference the boy had shown me originally seemed to fade away like a broken mask before his curiosity.

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“I punched it… hard very hard” I said in a tone that spoke of total nonchalance deciding I would take the opportunity to try and annoy the kid. Speaking with Reggie like this was nice, it reminded me of the good parts of my childhood of my brother teasing me and acting like all the stuff I didn’t understand or found amazing was totally normal.

I hope you’re okay Vlad. I thought inwardly as I remembered the smug teenage smile he’d always give me when he was talking absolute shit and I was eating it up like his words were gospel.

Reaching up I wiped away a wet spot in my right eye with the back of my hand before it became a full-blown tear and I hardened my heart.

I began processing the stag using my knives and ropes to hang and skin it before the butchering process, all the while Reggie stuck around peppering me with questions of every variety most of which I answered simply.

“How strong are you?”

“Very” I would reply. Eventually, however, Reggie asked me a question that gave me pause “Why are you out here, if you’re taking me to the military to be safe, shouldn’t you be there too?”

I decided to respond truthfully, as I often preferred, considering I hate lying. “I hate the city, Reggie, in fact, I hate people I can’t stand to be near them. Everything good I’ve ever had has been taken from me by other people, everything terrible that’s happened to me has been at the hands of humans… We truly cannot stand them.” I finished my sentence as I ripped a skinned leg off the stag, and hung it over the fire.

I sat beside the fire slowly turning the roasting leg and cooking it for quite some time before Reggie spoke once more. “If you hate people… or humans then why did you help me? And why are you still helping me?” he asked me with confusion written on his face, and small sparks of fear dancing in his eyes.

Sighing hard I turned to Reggie trying to find the words to explain a set of actions I didn’t truly understand. “Look, Reggie, in my life I’ve seen a lot of bad shit happen, good people murdered out of greed, or pushed to suicide because of shitty circumstance, or worse the moment good and empathy dies and leaves behind a hollow wretched thing that’s left half broken and craving violence as a way of righting wrongs. Wrongs that can never be undone.”

I looked into Reggie’s eyes as I continued. “However I just don’t think you deserve my ire, anger has controlled much of my life and my actions, it’s been there for me in my lowest lows and I’ve allowed it to lead me by the hand far more than is wise. Yet looking at you I just can’t see any reason I would have to hurt you, you’re a child you don’t deserve a father who beats and abuses you, you don’t deserve to be sleeping in the cold alone and scared. The very fact that this is the life you’ve led emphasizes everything I despise about humanity, I don’t think everyone deserves to die, I just don’t think humanity is entitled to the benefit of the doubt anymore. You however are still young and innocent you’ve done nothing wrong. And if I can do nothing else I would love to preserve whatever is left of that innocence for as long as possible.”

As I finished speaking I could see Reggie’s face was full of mixed emotions that I was in no way qualified to figure out, the only one I could really make out with any certainty was sadness. As if somehow just getting a glimpse into the weight I myself carried was enough to depress him.

Using one of my clean knives I started shearing meat from the cooking Stag leg, taking thick cuts of well-done thigh muscle off the bone, I handed the piping hot meat to Reggie, and he mumbled thanks before digging into it, with a voracity that reminded me just how rough his life with his father must have been.

I watched over the boy as he ate cutting off slices of meat for him until he told me he was full. Then I began eating, a process which based on the shock on my companion's face wasn’t too pretty to watch.

“Alright listen up, I’m going to string up the stag then we’ll get going, it’s gonna be a pretty long walk alright, and I want you to remember the route we take just in case alright,” I said as I stood and began making good on my lashing the stags remaining legs together with multiple thick ropes and throwing them over a high thick tree branch, I hauled the considerably lighter carcass up and tied off the rope.

Once I was finished I found some privacy in the trees and changed into some fresh unblooded clothes and then I stepped up beside the boy and told him it was time to go and we started our walk.

Occasionally as we made our way out of the woods I would claw a tree and draw Reggie’s attention to the markings to let him know they were there and how to use them for navigation.

The journey was agonizingly slow to me especially since I had taken Reggie the long way around into another entrance of the city to avoid reaper territory that along with the frequent breaks we took for the kid to catch his breath, meant it was the early evening by the time we were deep enough in the city to start seeing large concentrations of people.

A lot of attention was being directed my way, for the obvious reasons, I was built a brick shit out, barefoot with large claws hanging off my fingers and clacking against the road, not to mention the fangs I exposed every time I had to answer another of Reggie’s questions.

Eventually, we made it to a set of chain fences topped with barbed wire that wasn’t present the last time I was near the police station, two soldiers stood at either side of the gate that led into the true center of the city and I stopped a short distance away from the heavily armed men.

“Hey, you two can I get some help, I’ve got a lost kid here” As I shouted out to the soldiers they finally gave me their attention seeing that I actually wanted something and wasn’t just some random guy, they looked towards me and then looked me up and down a couple of times before they ran their eyes over Reggie.

The men started to slowly advance toward me their grips on their weapons a little tighter than I was comfortable with, however, I was understanding that I didn’t exactly look friendly.

One of the men then started speaking once he was within a few meters of me. “I.D yourself” was all he said and I felt my eye twitch subtly at the way he completely ignored my request for aid.

“My name is Viktor, now could you please help me out with this kid?” I said attempting to be as polite as possible despite my mounting annoyance.

“Alright, where’d you find the kid, and where are you coming from.” the man on the left asked this time.

“I found him wandering around the woods” I replied easily.

“The woods? No one is meant to be out there” his response was instant and his tone shifted to hostile almost immediately.

Shit, how did I forget that? I thought to myself.

“Listen can you please just help this kid out,” I said getting even more frustrated and gesturing towards Reggie.

As soon as I moved my hand the soldiers raised their guns at me. “Don’t move!” “Drop the weapon!” they both shouted in unison and I momentarily froze before side-stepping slightly to stand in front of Reggie.

“What the fuck is wrong with you. I have a fucking child here put your guns down!” I shouted immediately rage and confusion flooding my mind.